It's the best thing he could have said. The very last thing she wants is for these visits to be burdensome to him, for his guilt to obligate him to visit when he might not actually wish to himself. But he does, she can hear it in his voice and feel it in his way he holds her, and suddenly her world isn't unending darkness.

"Of course we can," she agrees easily, and there's even a smile, small but steady. And they do. She tells him about the town while she prepares their simple dinner, giving him small tasks to help with like chopping vegetables while she shares stories of her months on the planet. The people she's met, the kindness they've shown the war widow who had found refuge on their little planet. The life she's begun to live.